Friday, May 1, 2009

A follow-up on the Chrysler bankruptcy. If what the Washington Post is today reporting is accurate, then the execrable hedge funds that forced the Chrysler bankruptcy are even more despicable than I originally imagined ( know, I know... they never fail to surprise me with the depths of their perverse greed):

The funds hold about $1 billion in Chrysler bonds and have turned down the government's terms. The government would have paid just under a third of the value of those bonds. However, many funds bought the bonds at deep discounts from other investors who feared the bonds might ultimately be worthless.

So these greedy bottom feeders bought distressed assets for pennies on the dollar in the hope of making a killing when the government bailed out Chrysler, and now they're angry that Obama wasn't ready to play their cynical game?

In this context, the following statement of a lawyer representing the hedge funds is almost laughable:

"It sounds like people are being bullied right now," said Ron Geffner, a partner at the law firm Sadis and Goldberg, which represents hedge funds. "To play the 'I stand with Chrysler, I stand with families, I stand with the dealers, I stand with the consumers' -- that's great conceptually, but . . . I stand with the fact that we live in a capitalist society where companies who don't modify their business plans and stay current die and go by the wayside."

These funds bought this debt under the assumption that the cavalry was going to come to the rescue, and are now acting as if it's illegitimate for the cavalry to come to the rescue of dying companies in a capitalist society!? Really, these people are unbelievable!